September signals many things — including the start of a new edition of the international talent show The Voicein Portugal.After last year’s ratings success, the show is back and wiwibloggs has its eyes glued to some of the fresh talent that we would love to see in the country’s Eurovision 2018 selection Festival da Canção.

Last year, six out of the sixteen singers in the revamped Festival da Canção came from the The Voice. Today we trawled social media and scanned fan message boards in the hopes of unearthing this year’s fan favourites who just might become the next Salvador Sobral (and maybe influence some FdC composers along the way).

There’s certainly precedent.

After winning The Voice last year, Fernando Daniel started working with composer Nuno Feist on his entry “Poema a Dois”. He finished in 5th place but went on to release his killer first single “Espera” (Wait).

But before (hopefully) joining the ranks of the stars at Festival da Canção, singers on The Voice must impress the show’s four veteran mentors — Anselmo Ralph, Aurea, Marisa Liz and Mickael Carreira.

Here are three of the favourites…

DIANA LUCAS

Diana Lucas is no stranger to Portuguese audiences. In 2003, at the age of sixteen, she competed on Idol, finishing in eleventh position. Three years later she released her album “Pontas Soltas”, delivering the hit single “Desculpa Lá” that has clocked more than three million views on YouTube.

After a long hiatus she auditioned for The Voice singing Festival da Canção 1976 song “No teu poema” by Carlos do Carmo. She immediately turned all four chairs and was recognised by several judges.

“I auditioned to say that I’m still still here, I still sing, I still have a lot to give,” she told the judges before the singer Áurea praised her performance.

“Diana is a great singer,” she said. “I admire you and I always did. It’s good to see that you never gave up.”

TIAGO NACARATO

Channeling some Brazilian bossa nova realness, Tiago Nacarato took Portugal by storm covering Vinicius de Moraes’ famous song “Onde Anda Você”, and has already racked up almost one and a half million hits.

His charming presence, dazzling looks and smooth voice worked wonders with the audience and, more importantly at this stage, all four judges.

Tiago has already expressed his love for Brazilian music and Portuguese fans didn’t waste time linking him to Festival da Canção 2018 Brazilian composer Mallu Magalhães. Should they work together? Yes, please!

KÁTIA MOREIRA

Don’t remember Kátia? You should. As part of the female group Nonstop, Miss Moreira failed to reach the final of Eurovision back in 2006, but she did make the wiwibloggs list of Portugal’s five worst entries of the 21st century. Yikes!

Her comeback, however, is a completely different story. After the group disappeared Kátia continued to make music, singing in bars and small gigs, owning it as her profession.

With a unique take on Jessica Rabbit’s “Why don’t you do right”, the former Eurovision diva known for rocking feathers and tiaras turned the chairs of all four mentors.

What do you think of Portugal’s latest batch of talent from The Voice? Do you see Eurovision potential in any of them? Tell us in the comment section below!

Bernardo Pereira

Portuguese blogger Bernardo has followed Eurovision since 2006. He joined wiwibloggs in 2015, bringing plenty of sun and Iberian realness with him. His favourite ESC entry is "Euphoria" by Loreen. You can follow him on Twitter @b_tavares_p . Keep up with the latest Eurovision news and gossip by liking our Facebook page and by following the team on Twitter @wiwibloggs.

43 Comments

Polegend GodgarinaOctober 5, 2017 @ 8:03 pm

I need myself a Mea culpa/Canta por mim-sized bop from Portugal. They need to bring the energy and colors we can only expect from an Iberian country. I would be very disappointed if they attempted an Amar pelos dois 2.0, we all know how much copies of past successes tend to backfire.

i know right? Bring it Portugal! Not even greece has been sending good ones. Mediterraneans need to start giving us that Mediterranean realness again. Nordic pop sounds way too artificial and fake. It just doesn’t fit, they can make pop but they don’t have the energy and passion that southern europeans do.

I actually liked them and think they should have been chosen. But, Catarina´s songs do not really represent Portuguese music, as they were both composed by Andrej Babic, who besides these collaborations with RTP, has nothing to do with the Portuguese music scene. I doubt it very much that you will see an act like Catarina or Suzy, not under the current artistic direction of FdC.
BTW, Portugal is not in the Mediterranean…

Culturally, Portugal IS Mediterranean, even if geographically it isn’t. Southern european realness, whatever you wish 🙂
Even if Andrej doesn’t have anything to do with portuguese music, he was inspired by it. I don’t think we should doubt, i mean look at Lisa Garden last year. The current artistic directors of fdC are very diverse and open minded.

And besides, Canta por mim was in 2012. The song was in the trend of back then (ethno pop and alike). We are talking about 2018, six years later. We are living a completely different moment… And it´s not a Catarina Pereira/Andrej moment…

Meaning no disrespect for the artists that go out there to these tv shows and expose themeselves, I would rather that the composers of the FdC 2017 would sing themselves the songs (the ones who do, of course) or choose people with a proven and solid artistic background and with artistc careers that make sense with the song they represent. Fernando Daniel proved that randomly chosing from talent shows is a recipe for failure. As for Portuguese music being boring, I would recommend first to look up the contemporary Portuguese music scene and then make a judgement.

Tiago, just because he’s cute. Otherwise, I don’t really like this type of music (as I wasn’t a fan of Sobral’s singing either). I believe in 2018 Portugal will get 0 points or bottom 5 in the final, just like Austria in 2015 when hosted the event (after Conchita won in 2014). If Portugal wants a good rank in 2018 then they must pick an artist with a different musical style than Salvador Sobral’s. People and juries have voted for Portugal because it was “something else”, but if they’ll send Salvador 2.0 next year as well, then they’ll flop big time…

Dario you’re right. It’s always about sending something new and Portugal shouldn’t stay on its comfort zone. They gotta show they can do a decent song with another type of style, cause that’s what the contest is about too. The audience is getting tired of these ballads. In melf est you can tell the old guys have a different mindset. With Portugal and Spain, well…it’s clear.

You are completely wrong. People are getting tired of the same old fake Anglo-Swedish mashine-made circus we call Eurovision songs. Many people are getting out of touch with reality, that is what’s happening

Bart, no they aren’t. If that was the case, other countries would have changed, but they keep doing that machine-made circus as you call it. The dislikes on Salvadors video say it all. More dislikes than any eurovision winner.

Sure… Sooo many pitty votes… Europe must the be most pitty feeling continent… Get over it, cris! Besides, so many people singing the song in so many languages, even adventuring into Portuguese, proves that people don’t like it… Including the beloved Belgium that chose ‘amar pelos dois’ to showcase their singer for 2018

I am sure nobody obliged her to sing Amar… It is not like Blanche sang 1944. Besides, Laura being a fan of 1944 proves exactly my earlier point that people are getting tired of circus-vision, unlike what cris and/you said.

Keep saying those nasty things. Last year proved that the more people said things exactly as you did, the more positive energy flew towards Salvador and Portugal until the very final victory, my friend. Good karma, man! The more people want Portugal to fail, the better the result will be!

Actually Penny is not that far off.
Katia did a big band (jazz) song. Tiago did bossa nova (mix of jazz and samba). And even Diana’s fado is not the typical fado. Its a slower jazzy version. So… Jazz has many subgenres.

I don’t like jazz myself, but i can’t agree with you. If you have so many pop songs every year at eurovision why cant you have a couple of jazz songs either? Portugal has a strong connection to slower genres such as fado, brazilian and latin rhythmes. It makes sense that most songs are slower ballads.

Also… This is just a talent show…. The participants are allowed to sing whatever they want.

For some people here there are only 2 kinds of music. Music with beat and music without (which recently they have started identifying it as Salvador-style, apparently they didn’t have a name for it before).

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